Wizard's Other Rules
by Grav
Summary: Every story has a path and every path has rules. Rule #4: She really is that in to you. Keep your hands to yourself.
1. Rule 7

AN: One of the great things about Legend of the Seeker is that it follows the rules. Each episode is a gorgeous piece of story telling, using old devices in interesting ways, and this makes it possible to make informed guesses about how all the pieces are going to fit together. That said, I haven't read the books, nor have I seen past "Bloodline". I don't want to know if my guesses are correct. Please do not spoil me.

Disclaimer: Like most things in New Zealand, I do not own Legend of the Seeker.

Spoilers: Up to Bloodline, no book.

Rating: PG

Summary: This is a love story.

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**Wizard's Other Rules**

_Rule #7: People will make horrible mistakes. You have to love them anyway._

Once upon a time there was a wizard who was every bit as arrogant as his brother would come to remember. He came by his arrogance honestly; all of his teachers agreed that one of his powers had not been born in generations, and he was well nigh insufferable until he made his first mistake.

The product of that first mistake was a small, un-Gifted girl. The wizard hid her and her mother away, but he came to love her and, eventually, acknowledged her as his own.

But wizards do not settle and this wizard in particular had things to accomplish. He traveled widely, accumulating high knowledge and friends in many places. He learned as many secrets as the Midlands would reveal to him, and his power grew. Often, though, his mind would turn to the home he left and those he loved. It was this want for companionship that led him to make his second mistake.

It was customary for wizards of a certain age to take apprentices. As a member of the First Order, the wizard had considered himself exempt from custom for the simple reason that First Order wizards were uncommon and a lesser sorcerer was unlikely to keep up with him. After months of consideration and observation, however, the wizard selected an apprentice who, though not as powerful, possessed a drive for learning and a passion for magic that rivaled his own.

For several years they traveled together. The wizard's apprentice proved himself an able student. Though he could not match his master in power, he sought out legends and stories of magical devices that would supplement his growing skills. Soon, there was no tale he had not heard and no theory he did not long to test.

And so they continued until the wizard made his third mistake.

One summer night, three days before Beltane, the wizard and his apprentice went home. The years had slipped by faster than he had anticipated, and he was quite unprepared for the daughter who greeted him. He recalled rounded cheeks and a stumbling gait. The young woman who embraced him on sight had left all that behind long ago. It was difficult to say who was more surprised, the wizard or the wizard's apprentice.

As smart men are, the wizard was sometimes absentminded and occasionally lacked common sense. No man alive, however, could have missed the looks that passed between the wizard's daughter and the wizard's apprentice. Other men might have objected, but the wizard thought he knew the measure of his apprentice, and therefore pretended not to notice when his daughter and his student slipped away from the fires together. It never occurred to him that this was his fourth mistake.

Soon after, the wizard and his apprentice parted ways. The wizard returned to his solitary journeying. As the years rolled passed, he began to hear rumours of approaching darkness. Folk said it was magical, and the wizard dismissed the talk as superstition; he knew most of the other sorcerers, and felt that none of them were capable of such darkness.

Kingdoms weakened. Heirs died mysteriously. Confessors vanished. The murmurs of darkness became whispers, and then hoarse whispers in market squares across the Midlands. A new lord declared himself, and everywhere he went there was an awful peace. Few men had seen him and lived, but his red and black liveried guards did terrible things in his name. The wizard had hesitated too long. It was his fifth mistake.

The wizard went to the village where his daughter lived and was surprised when his old apprentice opened the door to his knock. The apprentice had changed. His pale face was all sharp angles and his eyes gleamed with a cold blue fire. For a moment, the wizard was too startled to speak, but then his daughter drew him in to sit by the fire, and in the ruddy glow of the hearth, the old apprentice looked once more as he had in his youth.

The wizard's daughter set a good table, and it was not until late in the evening when the wizard asked his former pupil if he knew anything about the dark peace creeping across the Midlands. Years later, the wizard will admit that his student's answers were too easy, too rehearsed in denial. In the warm fire of home, however, the wizard's concerns were lessened and in leaving his daughter with his old apprentice, he made his sixth mistake.

The wizard received two omens on the same day. In the morning a night whisp lands on his shoulder and whispers that his daughter is with child. At noon, the sun goes dark and evil radiates from the very stones. It seems almost that the earth has moved, torn asunder by the forces of darkness. The new lord has declared himself openly, taken direct command of his armies and overcome the defenses of every free kingdom in the Three Territories.

Horrified by the extent of his miscalculations, the wizard rushed to his daughter and spirited her away from her so-called protectors. He hid her as well as he could, magically changing her appearance and picking a village that was well guarded. He left her there, thinking that his presence would draw the new lord to her. So focused was he on the mundane aspects of his daughter's protection, the wizard forgot to consider fate.

Fate laughed at his seventh mistake.

The night the soldiers came for the first born sons of Brennidon, the wizard was already there. The screams of his daughter in the throes of birthing pains blended seamlessly with those mothers who lost their sons to the sword. The wizard had not really had the time to explain in detail what he was about to do, and he doubted that in her present state his daughter would understand him. He could only hope that she would not hate him. The wizard's daughter held her son and named him, and then she fainted. When she awoke, the wizard and the wizard's grandson had long departed.

The wizard's grandson did not cry as the wizard smuggled them out of the broken village. When the reached The Barrier, the baby reached for the green lights and cooed at them. The wizard did not hear his daughter as he crossed, but he heard too many baby boys. He gave his grandson to good people and became the Chicken Man of Blackthorn Hill, thinking that the prophecy which sent him rushing to his daughter's side had been averted. Thus he made his eighth mistake.

One day, twenty-three years later, the wizard's grandson met his sister. The wizard knew as soon as he saw her that his granddaughter shared both her parents with her brother. There was no time to ask his daughter how it had come to pass. Things happened quickly, then. The wizard's grandson gained sister, mother and grandfather, only to lose his mother and send his sister away.

As they walked through the forest, the wizard knew that it was time to tell his grandson how magic worked in family lines; that certain Gifts had come not from his mother, that certain talents came in pairs in the oldest families. The wizard's old apprentice had once had a younger sister on whom magic had no effect. And it seemed that the line of Rahl still bred true.

Zedd hoped that Richard would not hate him. He could only afford so many mistakes.

**fin**

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Gravity_Not_Included, March 30, 2009


	2. Rule 4

AN: Okay, this is my first attempt at "period" porn. So many laces! So many underclothes! I totally cheated.

Rating: M

Spoilers: Bloodline, no book

Disclaimer: Like many things in New Zealand, I do not own Legend of the Seeker.

Summary: That which is forbidden is always the hardest to ignore.

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**Wizard's Other Rules**

_Rule #4: She really is that in to you. Keep your hands to yourself._

She is enthralled by the power he holds over her, and she is excited by the power she holds over him.

She is not sure which of the two is more terrifying.

In her presence, he knows only desire, all thought of his quest banished. Since the first day he saw her, he has followed her with his eyes and coveted her with his soul. Her touch would mean worse than death, but he is always hard pressed to resist.

They'd met so unexpectedly, neither of the realizing the importance of the other, nor the danger. The wizard had warned them to be cautious, to show restraint, but the wizard wasn't here and his words faded to silence in his absence.

She knows she should not take him to her bed as well as he knows he should not follow her there. They have so many secrets from each other, secrets that could tear destiny asunder, but they do not hear the portents of doom over the rush of the blood through their veins.

His jacket lies carelessly on a roughly carved wooden stool. The cottage is small and rude, and full of all the smells of home. Nothing could be more different for him, since the world changed, and that is the attraction. The straw-fill mattress rests on ropes slung between bedposts. He pushes her down towards it so that the ropes strain, without making any attempt to remove her dress.

He looms over her, silhouetted in the firelight and, for just a moment, her fear overwhelms her want of him. She stiffens, but then he reaches for the lacing of her overdress and begins to slowly unbind them, and she is swept away once more.

Her hands trace his skin under his loosened tunic, and his mouth whispers along her skin exposed to his touch. He withdraws for a moment to pull the tunic over his head, and she follows him up, half sitting to not lose contact with his skin. He pulls the overdress down, exposing shoulder and breast, and locking her arms against her sides before pushing her down again once more.

She reaches down, the only direction he has left her, and unties his breeches. She closes her palms around his half hard length and the mouth at her breast opens in distracted want.

Suddenly, everything about him is hard. He pulls up her skirts and removes her petticoats. His full weight comes to bear on her, pressing down and in with no regard for her comfort. She gasps, neither unsurprised nor unpleased by his ferocity, and wraps her legs around him to draw him in. The pressure inside her is building with every thrust.

She feels the end coming and irrationally tries to stop him, but it is too late and her resistance only spurs him on. Her arms are complete immobilized now, and his every stroke fuels a fire neither of them can resist, whatever reason is telling them. His fingers dig into her shoulders, marks she knows will bruise, but she is too far gone to care.

The wave breaks and she cries aloud in ecstasy. His eyes are wide and oddly blank as he follows her into that dark bliss after a few more erratic thrusts. They lie together until the enormity of what they've done sinks in.

He leaves her without a word. She does not watch him dress nor get up when he leaves. Already her mind is working, trying to figure out what to do next. She knows he is too.

After he is gone she counts to one hundred before she rises. She begins to pack. When he returns for her, he will not be alone and he will not take no for an answer. She must be gone before he comes back. Less than an hour passes before she leaves that place forever, carrying with her almost nothing at all.

In nine months time will be born a girl-child. Her mother will hold her in her arms for eight fear-filled days. Her father will wake in cold sweats from dreams of fire when he learns of her existence, but he will never kill her.

He is too afraid that she will have a sibling.

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**fin**

AN: Okay, so in my personal canon, Darken Rahl is the parent of both Richard and Jennsen. And this is the story of how Taralynn got him to father the second of two children who will bring him down, without telling him of the first one. Standard "do not spoil me for the book" clause applies. :)

Gravity_Not_Included, March 30, 2009


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